Former MP G Vivekanand, who has been with both the Congress and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday in the presence of senior party leaders in New Delhi.
Vivekanand resigned from the TRS and also gave up his post of advisor to the state government as he was upset after being denied a ticket in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
After joining the BJP, he claimed that he was inspired by the work being done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and accused Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao of making the TRS a family-run entity.
Minister of State for Home Affairs G Krishan Reddy and Telangana BJP chief K Laxman welcomed Vivekanand into the party.
This was an expected move as Vivekanand had met with Union Home Minister Amit Shah in July this year. At the time, he told TNM, “Since I am an independent politician now, the BJP have been repeatedly asking me to join the party. I have to talk to my people before taking such a decision. There is no hurry [to join the BJP]. But the BJP have been persuading me.”
Vivekanand is the son of late Congress leader G Venkatswamy and has been known to jump back and forth between the TRS and the Congress.
While he quit the Congress to join the TRS during the Telangana agitation for separate statehood, he joined the Congress after the state was formed. After getting a Congress ticket for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and losing to a TRS candidate, he again jumped ship and joined hands with KCR.
However, with the TRS denying him a ticket in the 2019 polls, he had been visibly upset, even protesting the state government's move to construct a new Secretariat in Hyderabad.